THE RISE AND FALL OF EA(Electronics Arts )

EA, for decades, has been one of the largest most impactful makers of video games. Their sales have been increasing along with the rest of the industry. Now reaching over 5 billion a year, and that's because, over that time, they've been making some of the world's most popular best-selling video games. Among countless others, they're the company behind the "sims, need for speed, madden" and "FIFA," yet I don't think many of you will be surprised to hear that over the years, EA has not had the best reputation. They've been commonly referred to as the evil empire. That may not even be the worst when the consumerist was a popular website that helps tournaments each year asking people to vote for the worst company in America. Two hundred fifty thousand people voted for ea, making them the winner. They beat out some tough competition, and too those brackets contained airlines, retail stores, banks. So many people were surprised at the time. When a maker of video games took the title, they were a two-time winner. They won that same tournament the following year as well. Further evidence of the hatred is a full six years. Later they were included in the USA list of America's top 20 most hated companies.

About EA:

Trip Hawkins founded EA in what I would consider the early days of home video games, and I have to say that even before EA existed, this was a person with an impressive resume. He had graduated from Harvard, received an MBA from Stanford, and became one of apple's first 50 employees. In the late 1970s, after four years at Apple, he left the company with the intention of starting his own business from home. Where he would make and sell video games for home computers. The original name of the business was amazing software with an apostrophe. But it was quickly changed to electronic arts. The reason for that change is because he strongly felt that each video game was its own work of art. The developers were the artists, and the name should reflect that. Within the year, he received five million dollars from private investors used the money to hire about a dozen employees. He relocated the operations outside of his home and actually put out some of their first video games. Early on, the ideas were famously from independent creators from outside the company, and their names were featured on the cover of the games. By the end of the 1980s, electronic arts was the leading producer of software containing computer games. But you know, by this time, it was starting to look like consoles were becoming the more promising market. There were far more owners of the most popular system on the market. In meanwhile time Nintendo said ea could only make games for the NES if they weren't made available on any other system. EA then took a big risk by passing on those terms instead of placing their focus on the newly introduced sega genesis. In 1989 EA raised 84 million dollars through an initial public stock offering, and a significant portion of the money was put toward producing games for the genesis. Through the early 1990s, the pairing of SEGA and EA helped propel both of them forward, and you could see how it helped their sales grow. In 1992 their sales for console games surpassed their sales for pc games, and in the following year, over half of that 300 million dollars in revenue came solely from sega games. That's how EA became a force in the video game industry up until this point.

REASONS FOR HATRED ON EA

Smaller developers, believe it or not, ea has an extended history of acquiring smaller, typically independent video game development companies and well killing them. In 1992 once everything was starting to take off with their sega games, EA was looking to take that opportunity to grow their business. They were looking to expand internationally, and they were looking to expand their game production .their second big acquisition was in 1992. when they bought origin systems, they were a video game developer going all the way back to the 1980s. They were most known for was their ultima series which was considered to be a groundbreaking early RPG for the computer. When EA bought origin systems, they were now in charge of the development of the famous Ultima series. Two years later, when making ultima 8, it is widely believed that the production of it was rushed because ea set an unrealistic deadline. The result was a game that felt unfinished. that had all these plot holes. The same thing happened with ultima nine, and because they weren't as good, their reputation and suffered in the sales fell. Since the sales were down, EA discontinued the series and, in 2004, shut down origin systems. Altogether now I know it's not all this simple and direct but from the public's perception. EA took control of a perfectly good developer, forced them to put out some bad games, and then shut them down. Another example is the bullfrog, and this was a video game developer from the UK again going back to the 1980s. That was most known for their strategy games like populist well in 1995. they were bought by EA. They even put out a successful game called dungeon keeper under their control. But by 2001, bullfrog no longer existed because they were merged into EA UK. Here the biggest issue may have been the culture shock for the bullfrog. EA turned the whole thing into more of a professional operation, and the new environment may have hindered their creativity. But either way, the fact remains that EA bought a promising successful game developer, and six years later, they were effectively shut down. A third major example is Westwood studios, yet another game developer going back to the 1980s. That was best known for their command and conquer series. They were bought by EA as part of a larger deal valued at 122 million dollars in 1998. Five years later, they shut down when EA consolidated some of their studios. There are many more examples. EA wanted those developers to do so well that they would try to adapt them to their own proven system involved setting aggressive deadlines and introducing a comparatively strict and more professional corporate culture. But their attempts to make things better ended up backfiring. They stressed everyone out and hindered creativity. Second Reason: Because it's probably the most relevant one today, microtransactions and loot boxes, it's essentially when you have to pay real money to unlock stuff within a game. EA has been infamous for including these all over the place. We have to admit that these are effective ways for EA to keep a stream of revenue coming in long after the game is sold. But it doesn't go over well with the players. One good example is star wars battlefront 2. back in 2017, before it was ever even officially released, it received unprecedented backlash from the gaming community because the loot box system within the game was designed to give the player significant gameplay advantages, essentially making it pay to win. Nobody wants to spend 60 dollars for the game up front, and then if you refuse to pay more money, you'd be at a disadvantage compared to the other players. It seemed like EA was more concerned with extracting money from the players rather than delivering a fun experience. They actually claimed that all this was in place to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking heroes. But that didn't go over well either. It was actually said in a Reddit comment that soon became Reddit's most downvoted comment of all time.

It's more or less like a never-ending issue with EA Sports.